Top 599 Onstage Quotes

Pure entertainment is not an egotistical lady singing boring songs onstage for two hours and people in tuxes clapping whether they like it or not. It’s the real performers on the street who can hold people’s attention and keep them from walking away.

There were times in my career I went a little further than I wanted because of expectations. Doing certain things onstage when children were in the audience, wearing certain clothes, singing certain lyrics.

But even so, I still get nervous before I go onstage.

I want to feel lucky every night when I go onstage, and not feel like, ‘Oh, great, here we go again.

In my day, in my era, Ralph McDaniels, just being five and being at his block party, you could just got onstage.

Entertaining and being onstage is such a rush; it’s amazing… and I just hope that it can last, and last for a long time.

I have four or five custom suits, including one that’s velvet, and a gray one I wear onstage. It’s wool.

I just get onstage and sing. I don’t think about how I’m going to do it – it’s too complicated.

However I am is however I am. When you see me onstage or in the press, there’s not a lot of thought and calculation that goes into it.

The good thing about most of the girls that I’ve met on the road is that, regardless of whether they’re cute or not, man – they can bring it onstage, which is inspiring not just for young girls and young people in general but for myself because then it makes me want to step it up.

My style offstage is so different from onstage. I love a pair of sexy heels with jeans, a nice jacket, or a little dress.

That’s an amazing feeling, to walk onstage, and you’re not thinking about anything, you’re not thinking about your lines or what you’re supposed to do – your body, your brain knows, so there’s freedom. There’s not fear, there’s not nerves.

Music is very similar to comedy: It’s all about texture, timing, context, vocabulary, performance. When someone’s onstage doing a solo, essentially it’s the same thing as what a comedian does. They’re in the moment. They’re listening.

Being onstage and communicating with an audience was part of my life since I was very little, but I was never pushed into singing.

My background is a small town with no movie theater. So… I always pictured myself onstage. I went to acting school and learned all the skills. I left early because I did my first movie and discovered that I really loved the minimalistic work with the camera.

I don’t use sex to sell records, obviously, but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel like I have to make an effort to look good when I go out onstage, to wear something pretty.

I feel like, anytime I’m onstage, I tend to feel very connected with people in the audience or with the sort of heartbeat or tempo of the audience.

I’m now learning how to distinguish when I’m acting and when I’m not acting – offstage as well as onstage.

Being a growing entertainer, period, you’re going to always have struggles. I’m still trying to learn how to even perform right onstage.

I’ve never been onstage in my life.

I’m a selfish person, and I’m going onstage to have a good time, and I’d love if you want to be a part of it. So if people don’t get it, they’re wrong. I think they’re wrong, and I think they either don’t want to have a good time or they just don’t like my style.

Everyone has their own tastes. Some people want to feel like it’s Queen onstage, including the dress-up thing, but that’s not my style. I do know some people love that and wish I would do it, but I have no interest in that.

Onstage, you can be anything you want to be. In concert, I might project a different side of myself, but I wouldn’t do anything I’d be embarrassed of.

I never really thought of music as a particularly social thing. I experienced music through recordings as opposed to concerts. It just makes you think about the way things are put together, the way things are written as opposed to the showbusiness of something onstage, so no regrets there.

There’s a picture of me as a little girl, and I’m waiting to go onstage, and I am biting the last bit of nail I have left on my finger.

The best live recordings capture elements of surprise onstage.

When Kehlani brought me out onstage, I really enjoyed that. I was just appreciative for her to think of me and bring me out woman to woman, introducing me to a whole new audience to me. It was just showing that I was appreciated for what I’m doing, that some people mess with me, and I’m all over the place.

When you look into the eyes of your people out there that came to see you, that’s when it’s like, ‘Yep, this is what it’s all about.’ This is why we don’t sleep, and this is why we write songs and try to be the best. This moment right here onstage.

I have had fans make me the big picture collages of the photo books; I have had fans send me birthday cakes… sing to me on my voicemail. I have had fans flash me. I have had older fans give me their bras and underwear onstage.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

When you’re onstage in theater, if you mess up a line, there’s no ‘Cut! We’ll get it again.’ It’s full steam ahead.

While I enjoy it, I will continue to go onstage. While I contribute something, fine. I don’t want to be dragging my feet. I don’t want to become pathetic, but I think I will be lucid enough. I’ll know when to stop.

No, because I was always nervous about being onstage.

I just like to play and I’m always ready to be back onstage.

If I go onstage, I want to give people everything they want and more. I’ll wash their car for them on their way out.

I’m happy with the way everyone presents themselves onstage.

Cutoff flannel and a mullet. That’s what I’m rolling with. If you see me onstage, that’s what it’s gonna be!

I always say, when you’re onstage you can’t please everybody. I’m sure there are people who may not take to what I do, but that’s okay. Thank God the majority are in my corner.

I play loud onstage for my own benefit as I like. But I’m not too fond of the P.A. either.

It’s hard to talk about yourself onstage and be sincere about it.

Whenever I go to shows, I end up looking at what shoes the guy onstage is wearing and the jacket he’s got on. And when you know everything’s gonna be under scrutiny, it makes you feel more comfortable if you have cool stuff.

I feel so much at home onstage and so comfortable in my body.

I challenge myself everywhere, onstage, on the golf course. Hey, isn’t that the point of it all? To keep getting better? Otherwise why do it?

I feel like I’ve paid a really heavy cost, a really heavy physical health cost, for the years of touring and how physical I’ve been onstage.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

I don’t practice or write stuff down – everything I do onstage was just made up before I went on.

I can’t speak for anybody else but myself ’cause I usually get in trouble when I speak for other people, so I’ve learned my lesson not to do that, but for me, I’ve been known to pace for quite a while when I walk onstage, and that’s just because I’m becoming one with my shell.

I want to be able to deliver the kind of show that I want – to go onstage with my chin held up.

I don’t hate myself anymore. I used to hate my work, hated that sexy image, hated those pictures of me onstage, hated that big raunchy person. Onstage, I’m acting the whole time I’m there. As soon as I get out of those songs, I’m Tina again.

I normally feel relief that I didn’t die onstage or forget all my lines. Then I start remembering that I have to do it again sometime, and it’ll probably not go as well.

Doing ‘Life Without Makeup’ onstage is what inspired me to do a book in the first place.

That’s one of the great things about comedy: we can – and should – say the things that other people aren’t supposed to say. If we didn’t do that, if we didn’t push against those limits, we’d just be standing around onstage and yelling.

As much as I can act, I don’t have anything in me that yearns to be an actor – that sense of needing to be onstage, in costume, in character; that is utterly not interesting to me.

I hope I’m Jessica Tandy, you know. I hope I’m onstage, and I fall over at 85 or something with everyone applauding thinking that it was a joke, you know, ‘There she goes again,’ and I’m just gone. I’ve gone to Heaven.

Onstage, I channel my inner goddess. Everyday Jillian is definitely more low-key: jeans and a crop top with a sneaker or boot.

I think it’s going to be the most difficult thing to do, to leave the stage. But if you have no lucidity about it, it’s even worse because you don’t see the negative side of you still being onstage.

Being on stage was all about the palpable energy of a rapt audience hopefully buying into a life onstage. The immediate connection with the audience was the best part for me. The camera is not as fun, but your work is preserved forever. There’s immortality to it.

I want to write the reparations joke that makes people go, ‘Yay! I’m so happy!’ It’s easy to go onstage and just make fun of all the ‘isms’ instead, but we can’t all be Jeff Dunham. Although that pays very well… it pays way better to be Jeff Dunham than it ever paid to be George Carlin or Lenny Bruce.